“Asking to be considered a refugee & applying for status isn’t a crime,” Ocasio Cortez said Sunday on Twitter after US border agents repelled Central American migrants with tear gas. “It wasn’t for Jewish families fleeing Germany. It wasn’t for targeted families fleeing Rwanda. It wasn’t for communities fleeing war-torn Syria. And it isn’t for those fleeing violence in Central America.”

[AOC] also shared an image of the words of "First they came...," the famous poem by German theologian Martin Niemöller that was inspired by the tragedies of the Holocaust. (The words are mounted on a wall at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.)

The poem reads:

“First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.

"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.

"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”

Ocasio-Cortez's tweet sparked major backlash, with critics accusing her of trivializing the Holocaust and slamming her for doing so in defense of Omar, who has repeatedly fought off claims of anti-Semitism.

Jewish 2020 presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez’s fellow progressive, distanced himself from her reference to concentration camps in a CNN interview Tuesday evening. “I didn’t use that terminology,” noted Sanders, subsequently repeating twice in the interview that he had “not used that word.”

But others who you'd expect to defend Cortez, were more willing to criticize -- like mi

College students weigh in on Ocasio-Cortez’s concentration camp remarks:

Not surprisingly, the Wiesenthal Center and Yad VaShem to come out with criticism of what Cortez said -- after all, that is to be expected.

What was not expected is that Poland, which has its own problems with the Holocaust and Poland's place in it, got into the act too:

With this letter, I am formally inviting @AOC to come to Poland,where Adolf Hitler set up the worst chain of concentration camps the world has ever seen, so that she may see that scoring political points with enflamed rhetoric is unacceptable in our contemporary Western societies pic.twitter.com/ivOTfmiCfo

You couldn't get a larger public discussion of the Holocaust if you tried - and discussion may end up bringing out more information, and more knowledge, of the Holocaust than any enforced book learning.

3 comments:

Joe in Australia
said...

AOC's use of the term “concentration camp” wasn't ridiculous: it is an accurate, precise, and measured description of the places in which alleged migrants are being interned. Confining the term (which was used long before and after the Holocaust) to the ones used by the Nazis makes it meaningless, even in the context of the Holocaust, because there were death camps, labour camps, transit camps, etc., and not all were operated by the Nazis.

As many other Jewish commentators have pointed out, this debate over terminology is a distraction from the very real horrors of the present attack on alleged migrants. People, many of whom are refugees, many of whom are sick or very young, are being confined in crowded and/or unsanitary conditions without adequate food, medical, or hygienic supplies. The use of the term “concentration camp” isn't mere political point scoring: it draws a parallel between these camps and ones used by many regimes (including the British, American, Soviet etc.) and thereby warns us about repeating the same mistakes.

Yes, the debate over terminology is a distraction -- but her use of that terminology and her use of Holocaust terminology in the past set up that that distraction.

Her denial of summoning a Holocaust comparison after deliberately using the words "Never Again" did not help.

As for being an "accurate, precise, and measured" description of the detention camps, that depends on what image the phrase "concentration camp" conjures up -- and whether one considers AOC to be "accurate, precise and measured" in general.

That Obama's connection to these camps was ignored during his terms in office and is evaded now only adds to the impression that she is merely trying to score political points.

And all of this debate back-and-forth could have easily been avoided if she had just addressed the problem head on.

Jews always have been and still are treated as outsiders and aliens; not members of humanity...except for the Holocaust. Then, suddenly, the Jewish experience is the human experience. Every other group is entitled to own its unique suffering except Jews. Imagine constantly hearing that this or that is "just like black American slavery." Maybe it is, maybe it isn't; but a bit presumptive, no? (As for the term "concentration camp," the technical meaning is irrelevant. Anyone who has heard of the Holocaust understands it to mean secret death factories where people were exploited for labor, experimented on, tortured, and deliberately killed. And that is not what is happening at the border, however horrifying it is in its own right.)

Also fascinating is the outrage - which I entirely share, by the way - at criminalizing the desperation of these illegal immigrants. Fascinating because criminalization of Jews who desperately fled Nazi Europe for Palestine (mostly legally, by the way) continues to this day...and as social justice, moreover. There was land enough for both Jews and Arabs just as there are jobs enough for illegals and citizens in the U.S. But again: double standard for those dirty Jews.